Make Easy Backups of Your DVDs (Koch Media CloneDVD)

Member Name: robomit

Product:	Koch Media CloneDVD
Date:	31/12/03 (2721 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Complete control of backup process, Inexpensive, Fast

Disadvantages: No option to copy a double layered DVD onto 2 DVDs , Can't backup copy-protected DVDs, Removing audio tracks doesn't improve video quality

The ULTIMATE DVD-9 (doubled layered) to DVD+/-R backup software.

I have used DVD X Copy, DVD2One as well as Intervideo DVD Copy and this program beats them all, and by a long shot! ! It is soooooo easy to make backups with CLONEDVD. I've almost lost valuable disks (which cost me a lot of money) due to surface damage, now I can backup my entire collection with ease. CLONEDVD takes around 40 minutes to backup a long movie on my machine (Pentium4 3GHz) either to an ISO image or directly to a 4.7Gb recordable DVD. No longer do you have to concern yourself with the size of the original movie, CLONEDVD compresses it to fit including all the menus. The compression quality is very good, but if you wish to retain the maximum quality you can decide what DVD extras you don't need to keep (e.g. foreign language soundtracks, commentaries, menus etc) so that your movie will fit uncompressed.

Furthermore, not only does it work great, but it also looks and feels cool. You’ve simply got to try it! And no, I do not work for Elby (the company that created the software).

The good:
1) Complete control of the backup up process, but at the same time it is child proof easy to control the options.
a) You first choose which titlesets you want with a nice little screen playing it at fast speed so that you know what titleset it is.
b) If you want you can check and uncheck audio tracks and titlesets. This is great because you don't want any unnecessary soundtrack reducing the video quality of your backups (note audio tracks are not compressed in this or any other DVD backup software I know).
c) Choose your burner or make a DVD ISO image.

2) Very good at recognizing different angle streams if the movie has multiple angles.

3) It is very fast, although not as fast as DVD2One, the Ferrari of video compressors.

The Bad
1) It does not contain an option to copy a double layered DVD onto 2 DVDs a
la DVD X Copy, without compressing.
2) CloneDVD does not backup copy-protected DVDs. You must install ANYDVD to backup copy protected disks (i.e. virtually all movies)
3) When you re-author (i.e. Copy DVD Titles), the selection of the audio, subtitle, etc. is a screen after you select which title you want to copy. Let's say after select certain title you want to copy, the "quality" percentage bar is at 91%, and when you go to the next screen, and deselect a couple of audio streams, this should improve the quality to 100%. Well, it does not. If you went back to the previous screen it still shows 91%. I tried this scenario with the same movie with DVDShrink and Nero Recode, and it improved to 100% on the "compress" bar if you deselected the extra audio streams.

Conclusion

There is another DVD copy software that allows this level of control in your DVD backup, but it leaves a nag screen in your copied DVD with a copy warning, and it cost 3 times as much, its called DVD X Copy Platinum. Overall ClONEDVD is an awesome program when used with ANYDVD, but there's a couple of things that need work (i.e. removing audio tracks doesn't improve video quality) and which therefore prevent me from giving it a perfect score.

Summary: